d the red boles, irradiated the cool
aisles of shadow, and burned in jewels on the grass. The gum of these
trees was dearer to the senses than the gums of Araby; each pine, in the
lusty morning sunlight, burned its own wood-incense; and now and then a
breeze would rise and toss these rooted censers, and send shade and
sun-gem flitting, swift as swallows, thick as bees; and wake a brushing
bustle of sounds that murmured and went by.

On she passed, and up and down, in sun and shadow; now aloft on the
bare ridge among the rocks and birches, with the lizards and the snakes;
and anon in the deep grove among sunless pillars. Now she followed
wandering wood-paths, in the maze of valleys; and again, from a
hill-top, beheld the distant mountains and the great birds circling
under the sky. She would see afar off a nestling hamlet, and go round to
avoid it. Below, she traced the course of the foam of mountain torrents.
Nearer hand, she saw where the tender springs welled up in silence, or
oozed in green moss; or in the more favoured hollows a whole family of
infant rivers would combine, and tinkle in the stones, and lie in pools
to be a bathing-place for sparrows, or fall from the sheer rock in rods
of crystal. Upon all these things, as she still sped along in the bright
air, she looked with a rapture of surprise and a joyful fainting of the
heart; they seemed so novel, they touched so strangely home, they were
so hued and scented, they were so beset and canopied by the dome of the
blue air of heaven.

At length, when she was well weary, she came upon a wide and shallow
pool. Stones stood in it, like islands; bulrushes fringed the coast; the
floor was paved with the pine needles; and the pines themselves, whose
roots made promontories, looked down silently on their green images. She
crept to the margin and beheld herself with wonder, a hollow-and
bright-eyed phantom, in the ruins of her palace robe. The breeze now
shook her image; now it would be marred with flies; and at that she
smiled; and from the fading circles, her counterpart smiled back to her
and looked kind. She sat long in the warm sun, and pitied her bare arms
that were all bruised and marred with falling, and marvelled to see that
she was dirty, and could not grow to believe that she had gone so long
in such a strange disorder.

Then, with a sigh, she addressed herself to make a toilet by that forest
mirror, washed herself pure from all the stains of her adventure,